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by StevetheIcecube



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mute Link, Post Game, Post Twilight Princess, The romance stuff is a little subtle, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5486330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Link finds his home destroyed and is forced to look to Zelda for somewhere to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

He definitely needed a new home, he thought, looking at the tiny house on the edge of Ordon Village. Smoke was rising from the roof. Someone had come to the house while he was out and had set it on fire.

He sighed. Even after everything he had done, people thought he was a cursed demon. Dear goddesses, why were the people of this world so cruel?

He wanted to stay here, in this village. He wanted to go back to being a goat herd. But his place wasn’t here any longer. Not after everything that had happened. His place was nowhere, he could see that now.

He looked back at the village one last time and got back up onto Epona’s back. He couldn’t make it across Hyrule Field before night fell, but he’d be most of the way there. He could hang around until dawn came, and then he’d go to the castle. Zelda would give him a home. That’s what she’d told him when they parted ways last.

-

It took an effort to get into the castle. The guards were jumpy and didn’t recognise him at first. Honestly. Just because he’d gone and put new clothes on and didn’t recognise himself anymore didn’t mean that no one else could recognise him either.

After that, he was taken straight to Zelda, who greeted him with a consistent smile even when he told her about what happened to his house. Good. He was tired of people acting sympathetic about people calling him a demon. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t do it if they were anonymous to him. He bet it was someone from the village who had set his house on fire, after all. Zelda was just as likely to turn against him as anyone else.

Probably.

He hoped not.

He liked Zelda. She knew what she was doing and she knew what he needed. She set him up in a room right next to her personal quarters and said that she’d come and get him when she was going to eat and that he should come and get her if he needed something. She also told him where the library was and where the private gardens were. She knew him strangely well, considering they’d never exchanged verbally.

Link sighed at the reminder. It wasn’t a surprise to him anymore, but it was so annoying. The whole thing was inconvenient and horrendous and he hated it. The first time it had happened, he’d been surprised. And every subsequent time, until it just didn’t go away. It was just a fact now.

Maybe he had been cursed.

-

Zelda found him in the gardens a little later. He’d been sitting up in one of the trees, fiddling with his bow, and she spotted him right away. He didn’t mind, though. Other people might throw stones if they saw him, and she was the only one who wouldn’t and the only one who’d seen him.

She said that she was going to eat lunch now, and he was welcome to join her if he wished to. He would, because he was starving.

Zelda was being very nice. She was also being gentle. He’d never been with her for this length of time before. She was different to everyone else he had known. The person she was most similar to was Ilia, and now Ilia was fine again, she’d turned away from him. She knew the legend of the cursed beast.

But this was Zelda and Zelda was nice. Zelda wasn’t Ilia. Zelda smiled at him and gave him food and was patient with his still slightly shaky handwriting. He had been a farmer and now he was a warrior, he’d never had much need for handwriting skills.

Zelda also smiled softly when she very lightly kicked his shin under the table, alerting him to the new figure who had come to sit at the table.

“Princess Zelda.” The man bowed his head in a respectful way. “I have come as a representative of the views of the council and wish that you do not hold it against me when I say that the council is concerned about the public’s thoughts of your choice of company.”

Link had to get up and leave the room. Of course. He wasn’t really welcome here. Maybe Zelda liked him, or maybe she just pitied him, but in the end there was nothing he could do. She was going to send him away regardless, because there were lots of people who hated him. The cursed beast of Hyrule’s legends.

Just because he could no longer speak.

-

Zelda came to him later, in his room. He was unpacking because he knew he’d be given the extra time to pack if he was being sent away, and then he’d get to spend a little more time with Zelda.

“Tell me how you came to lose your voice, Link.” She said almost as soon as she was in the room. She had a sheaf of paper in her hands.

It had crept up on him. He’d been a wolf for a while. It wasn’t his choice. He’d turned back to himself and he couldn’t speak for a couple of hours. But his voice came back, good as new. The next time it was forced on him, he was fine once he turned back, but there were periods in the evenings when he could not form words. He put it down to tiredness and trauma and just ignored it. The third time had been nothing. He was perfectly okay, as far as he could tell, though he had spent an extended period of time in a temple with no one around except Midna hiding in his shadow.

And then came that final forced transformation. He changed back to his usual self and he could feel it. A weight in the back of his throat that was strange but unobtrusive until he opened his mouth.  
He thought it would lift. But it never did.  
He wrote all of this down, and now, finally, was when Zelda seemed to pity him.

‘I’m ready, I know you have to send me away.’ He finished his writing with this, and Zelda frowned.

“I’m not sending you away.” She said. “I don’t care.” She took his left hand in both of hers, stroking his fingers. “There are feelings for you I have to figure out. A strange happiness and a feeling of belonging. I doubt this castle could be my home without you.”


End file.
